The Year of Rice and Salt

This was a thing he had said to Bold before. At the end he had been so weak he had had to be carried on a litter, but he never thought of stopping. In his last winter he had considered whether to move east in the spring, against China, or west, against the Franks. During a huge feast he weighed the advantages of each, and at one point he looked at Bold, and something on Bold's face caused the Khan to jump him with his powerful voice, still strong despite his illness: 'What's wrong, Bold? Don't want to go out on the hunt again?'

That earlier time Bold had said, 'Always, Great Khan. I was there when we conquered Ferghana, Khorasan, Sistan, Kbrezm and Mughalistan. One more is fine by me.'

Temur had laughed his angry laugh. 'But which way this time, Bold? Which way?'

Bold knew enough to shrug. 'All the same to me, Great Khan. Why don't you flip a coin?'

Which got him another laugh, and a warm place in the stable that winter, and a good horse in the campaign. They had moved west in the spring of the year 784.

Now Temur's ghost, as solid as any man, glared reproachfully at Bold from across the fire. 'I flipped the coin just like you said, Bold. But it must have come up wrong.'

'Maybe China would have been worse,' Bold said.

Temur laughed angrily. 'How could it have been? Killed by lightning? How could it have been? You did that, Bold, you and Psin. You brought the curse of the west back with you. You never should have come back. And I should have gone to China.'

'Maybe so.' Bold didn't know how to deal with him. Angry ghosts needed to be defied as often as they needed to be placated. But those jet black eyes, sparkling with starlight Suddenly Temur coughed. He put a hand to his mouth, and gagged out something red. He looked at it, then held it out for Bold to see: a red egg. 'This is yours,' he said, and tossed it over the flames at Bold.

Bold twisted to catch it, and woke up. He moaned. The ghost of Temur clearly was not happy. Wandering between worlds, visiting his old soldiers like any other preta… In a way it was pathetic, but Bold could not shake the fear in him. Temur's spirit was a big power, no matter what realm it was in. His hand could reach into this world and grab Bold's foot at any time.

All that day Bold wandered south in a haze of memories, scarcely seeing the land before him. The last time Temur visited him in the stables had been difficult, as the Khan could no longer ride. He had looked at one thick black mare as if at a woman, and smoothed its flank and said to Bold, 'The first horse I ever stole looked just like this one. I started poor and life was hard. God put a sign on me. But you would think He would have let me ride to the end.' And he had stared at Bold with that vivid gaze of his, one eye slightly higher and larger than the other, just like in the dream. Although in life his eyes had been brown.

Hunger kept Bold hunting. Temur, though a hungry ghost, no longer had to worry about food; but Bold did. All the game ran south, down the valleys. One day, high on a ridge, he saw water, bronze in the distance. A large lake, or sea. Old roads led him over another pass, down into another city.

Again, no one there was alive. All was motionless and silent. Bold wandered down empty streets, between empty buildings, feeling the cold hands of pretas running down his back.

On the central hill of the city stood a copse of white temples, like bones bleaching in the sun. Seeing them, Bold decided that he had found the capital of this dead land. He had walked from peripheral towns of rude stone to capital temples of smooth white marble, and still no one had survived. A white haze filled his vision, and through it he stumbled up the dusty streets, up onto the temple hill, to lay his case before the local gods.

On the sacred plateau three smaller temples flanked a large one, a rectangular beauty with double rows of smooth columns on all four sides, supporting a gleaming roof of marble tiles. Under the eaves carved, figures fought, marched, flew and gestured in a great stone tableau depicting the absent people, or their gods. Bold sat on a marble drum from a long toppled column and stared up at the carving in stone, seeing the world that had been lost.

Finally he approached the temple, entered it praying aloud. Unlike the big stone temples in the north, it had been no place of congregation in the end; there were no skeletons inside. Indeed it looked as if it had been abandoned for many years. Bats hung in the rafters, and the darkness was lanced by sunbeams breaking through broken rooftiles. At the far end of the temple it looked as if an altar had been hastily erected. On it a single candlewick burned in a pot of oil. Their last prayer, flickering even after they had died.

Bold had nothing to offer by way of sacrifice, and the great white temple stood silent above him. 'Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond! 0 what an awakening! All hail!' His words echoed hollowly.